


For Dinah's Sake

by e_arrow



Category: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Genre: Gen, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, a vague reference to that poem from Seven Pillars of Wisdom, history is abused
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:02:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28903827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/e_arrow/pseuds/e_arrow
Summary: After what happened in Dara'a, there are certain things one man must do for another (if he cares for him at all). A snippet about friendship.
Kudos: 9





	For Dinah's Sake

When the bandages on Lawrence’s back grow dark with blood, Ali feels his own blood boil with rage. When the bandages on Lawrence’s legs grow dark also, everything in Ali freezes to ice. 

He does not want to contemplate it. He struggles mightily with the temptation to pretend a beating was the worst that happened, before he realises how very wrong a thing he would be doing to this man, his friend. 

He makes Lawrence comfortable as he can—which is not very, but what it is possible to do, he does. Then he goes to speak with Majid and the rest. 

Witnessing their response is like watching his own mind again: icy shock, denial, then a return to rage. He has to give them a push, however, to realise what must be done. Ali had not needed even a moment to see it, but these men, these men Lawrence has driven to exhaustion and who are beginning to think Lawrence’s talent for victory might not be worth his talent for madness, who are not Lawrence’s dearest friend in all the world, need Ali to point out the balance between loyalty and duty.

A few moments later, Ali lifts the flap door and returns to Lawrence’s side. 

“Lawrence,” he says to the figure huddled in the furs. “Majid and I are leaving with the men. We will be gone until sundown. You will stay here?”

“Going?” Lawrence’s eyes dart up with alarm. It is perhaps the closest thing to emotion Ali has seen on the Englishman’s face since lifting him out of the mud. “Where? Why?”

“It is only for a few hours. There is something we must do. It is an Arab matter.”

“Oh,” Lawrence says, a strange bitterness in his voice. His expression slams shut and he turns away. “Go on, then.”

“Lawrence!” Ali says sharply. He grabs the man’s arm and pulls him back around, schools the desperation and pain off his own face. “You will stay here?” 

“If you wish it.” The man’s eyes remain fixed on the ground, and his words are a lifeless sigh, but it is enough. 

Ali, Majid, and the men head straight for Dera’a.

Had Ali been more familiar with the Jewish scriptures, he might have drawn parallels between their actions and those of prince Jonathan at the cliffs of Mikmash and Geba. As it is, there is little that could be called holy about what the Arabs do within the walls of Dara’a that day. Unlike the Philistine garrison, the Turks do not see their destruction coming. They slouch unawares in their fortress of mud as the Arabs descend, and a few hours later when the late afternoon sun breaks through the rainclouds, its waning light casts shadows across crimson pools of Turkish blood and over the entrails of Turkish corpses spilled upon the ramparts. Rarely are the men so careless in their violence, but then never have they had such a cause driving them past all restraint. The men, women, and children of the town, whether recognising an ancient rite or acting on some long-ignored instinct, hide inside their homes and let the Arabs do what they will. 

Ali has defeated many enemies in his lifetime, but never has he known such satisfaction so absent the thrill of victory. All he feels is a bottomless desire to see Turkish blood spilled on his blade and Turkish brains spattered before the flash of his rifle. When it is over, when not a single Turkish soldier remains alive, he feels the loss like a breath robbed from his throat. 

It is not enough, but they have done was it was possible to do. 

Majid finds a spare camel, and together the men ride grim and bloodstained back to camp. There is no question of refreshing their clothes from the Turkish supply. Ali finds Lawrence in the same position in which he left him, hunched before the fire pit in one rigid curve of nauseating tension. 

“Lawrence,” Ali says to the man who has failed to register Ali's return. “Come outside.”

“I don’t want to, Ali,” Lawrence breathes. 

“You must,” Ali counters firmly. 

He helps Lawrence slowly to his feet, supports him as he limps out onto the sand. There before the ruins stand the dregs of Lawrence’s Arab army, the few who have followed Lawrence to this godforsaken ( _well_ , Ali thinks, _perhaps not quite_ ) corner of the desert. Amongst them is a camel with a misshapen package on her back. When Lawrence appears, Majid walks over, pulls the package down, and throws it open at Lawrence’s feet. 

It is the Bey. The corpse’s eyes start bulging and white from their sockets, multiple of its limbs have been wrenched violently out of joint, and the bowels sprawl dirty and ragged from a vicious gash below the ribs. The genitals have been entirely removed with a blade of terrible sharpness. There is no sign of them anywhere else on the corpse, because Ali had been the one to throw them on the fire with all the rest. 

Ali looks at Lawrence with concern. It is important that Lawrence accept what has happened. It is very, very important, more important by far, that Lawrence understand why it has happened. 

Lawrence’s face is stone at first. Then, Ali notices that the fine trembling which has wracked Lawrence since Dara’a has stilled. And then, he sees the grim smile playing around the corners of Lawrence’s eyes. It is perhaps an improvement to see that hardness, that soul-deep flint that held Lawrence’s hands steady when he executed Gasim, return, but it is not what Ali desires—it is not what Lawrence needs. Ali lays a hand on Lawrence’s shoulder and those divinely blue eyes shift from flaccid corpse to living flesh. 

“You may not have been born in the desert, Lawrence,” Ali says, his voice at once hard as steel and gentle as silk, “and you are the most infuriating person I have ever fought, with or against. Yet, you are as much family to us as it is possible for any man to be.”

It is Lawrence’s turn to wear shock like a garment. Something human returns to Lawrence’s face then, something that abandoned him in an interrogation room in Dara’a, and his eyes fill with tears. 

“Ali,” is all he can gasp before Ali pulls him into an embrace. 

It feels good. It feels right, that Ali has done this and that Lawrence should approve of it. God can judge their actions here today when they both reach eternity, not before. Not in the light of what happened, and in the light of what must happen when one friend loves another like his own soul. Light and darkness, black and white. (salt and pepper, essential)

The men allow Lawrence his cry, because they know if Lawrence has truly returned to their midst it will not be long before he rouses to action. Indeed, the first thing Lawrence does when he lifts his face from Ali’s shoulder is to laugh and say, “Well, I suppose General Allenby will want to know that Dara’a is in Arab hands now. But we’d better leave out the details.”

It is a few days before Lawrence proves good on his word, riding away on a camel and promising to return from Jerusalem within two month’s time. Ali does not wish to see him go, not so soon and not when his injuries still pain him, but he kisses his friend’s ridiculous blonde head and sends him off to the English army. In the end, this seems to be God’s will. 

Because, when a man has had his dignity and identity robbed from him by enemies in the desert, he might be too confused about what he believes to stand for it in the first place; but when he has grinned over a corpse flayed at the hands of his friends, he has little patience for politicians and paper-pushing generals with their baby-soft hands and oily speeches. When they try to put him in his place, he remembers a friend’s wide smile and bright blood on a host of jambiyas, and argues Allenby and Dryden down with the same derisive humour (always for his enemies, never for his friends, he knows now how important that difference is) he turned on the corpse of the Bey. And when the Sykes-Picot Agreement comes out, Lawrence sits down and writes a biting letter directly to Churchill himself, mustering all his formidable eloquence to draw parallels between the Arab cause and the English one ( _A History of the English-Speaking Peoples_ might not be published yet, but Lawrence knows his audience). It is not the final straw (that is probably Feisal, with all his charisma and intelligence, going toe-to-toe with the Prime Minister a few years later and matching him wit-for-wit and that is through an _interpreter_ ), but it is certainly the lynchpin that swings Parliamentary favour back in the direction of Arab independence. 

_This_ is the power Ali wields, though he may never fully comprehend it. Lawrence’s heart in his hands, and all the stars in Heaven are Sherif Ali’s if only he realised. But it is enough that when Lawrence tells Allenby, “The best won’t come for money; they’ll come for me,” it is not with the glint of megalomania in his eye but the warmth of a remembered embrace. 

In the end, Lawrence tries very hard to give the Arabs Damascus, and he fails for reasons beyond his control, but he does not afterwards return to the English ranks, broken and dreamless. He stays in the desert. 

Lawrence knows where his friends are, and what he still owes them. So he stays.

Besides, Ali is still learning politics.

**Author's Note:**

> Genesis 34 contains one of the best stories you will never hear in Bible school, kids. I figured Lawrence of Arabia could use a remix along those lines, got excited, and wound up rewriting history. All cultural inaccuracies are mine own.


End file.
